Welcome Back

There's a thing that happens for some people at end of life where they go and come back, go and come back, and eventually, with much fanfare, none at all or somewhere in between, they go.

At first, it can be a little bit away, then back to regular life. Maybe it looks like sleeping for most of a day when that hasn't happened before, and then back to regular life (or a slightly modified version) the next day. Surely can be unnerving when it's not happened before and when the truth of thing becomes real, that someone you love is figuring out how to let go of their body.

As things change, as your person moves further into the process of leaving their body, they'll be away for longer and longer. This is part of the process for many, though not all, as some just…go. They're ready. We may not be. (I make up that the going and coming can be a way for us to get ready, too.)

You and I do this too when we're dying to something in our lives so that something new can rise up and be born.

Contraction.

Expansion.

When I care for people at end of life and they're in the going and coming part of their dying experience, the welcome back can be really wonderful or tough—or both. So many both/ands with dying.

If you're one who had to go away for a time to find a new version of yourself, to rest, to heal, to die to something so you could rise to something new, I see you over there.

Welcome back.

***Welcome Back begins a new Love Them Out Substack Series from the Map Of Dying™, a project I’ve been working on with Jocelyn Ring for a few years. The short commentaries alongside Jocelyn’s illustrations, oft made with Huckle-Buck under our feet at J’s kitchen table, offer entry points for conversations, thoughts, and meaning making about dying and living.

Also, Huckle-Buck says hi.